1. Start networking with other bloggers.  So you think you can do everything yourself, hah?  Well if you don’t try to network and build relationships with other bloggers in your niche you are missing out on a huge opportunity.  And I don’t just mean that you should spam a bunch of bloggers with your email begging for a link.  Just write them like you would a friend and ask if you can submit an article to their site.  If it is well written and it fits their niche, I’m sure they will accept it.  And then you have “an in” to be able to contact that site owner in the future to ask about other networking opportunities.  I have seen boat loads of traffic simply by networking with other bloggers, and it’s the single best advice I could ever give on taking your blog to the next level.
2. Focus on interacting with your social media fans.  Whether it’s Twitter followers or Facebook fans, you should be making it a point to interact with them.  If you just use your Twitter account to let people know about a new post on your blog they will hardly pay attention to it.  Social media is much more powerful when it is much more personal.  When you take the time to ask them a question, when you answer their questions, and when you take the time to comment on a photo, you are making your entire blog more personal to them.  And the more your readers feel like they know you, the more they will trust you and come back to your site more often.
3. Try something new and completely different.  Most bloggers are just trying to copy someone.  But this only helps the person you are copying.  Why not try a technique that no one has even though of it.  This can involve using video on your blog in a different way, creating unique infographics that your readers will love, or it can be as simple as having a contest now and then.  Anything to break the monotony of blogging will help give you that much needed boost.  Dukeo.com did something creative by having silly caricatures drawn of some of the top bloggers in the world and it generated a huge buzz in the internet marketing community.  That idea has been taken, but find another one and run with it.
4. Tap into new traffic sources.  So your traffic levels aren’t changing much?  Well where are you getting that traffic from?  The internet is huge and only getting more users on a daily basis.  Find out where they are and build roads to your site.  You can get these traffic sources through other blogs, traffic exchanges, email lists, PPV and PPC marketing efforts, article marketing, and many other places.  This game is always changing and there is always a new source of traffic out there.  But don’t forget the old ones either.

Phillip is a writer for a how to tips website at www.EZhowtotips.com where you can find all kinds of answers to how to questions.

• How to Set Goals for your Blog – March 31, 2011
• WordPress 3.0.1 Released – August 1, 2010
• Tumblr Is Growing Fast: Perfect Tool for Quick Blogging – March 9, 2010
• Windows Phone 7 Theme for Your WordPress Blog – May 31, 2011
• Creating a Unique Blog for your Business – May 17, 2011

How to Take Your Blog to the Next Level originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

Points to remember while planning the blog

• How visitors will navigate the site for content- The internet visitor has a short attention span and little patience for fluff-he wants to get straight to the point, and get to the content he needs. Visitors either scroll down for the relevant title, or search from the newest. Therefore blog posts can be placed in excerpts on the home page, or titles listed, or assigned to categories which can then be searched.
• Include the search option-this simplifies things for visitors who can use keywords in their search and get straight to the relevant post.
• First timers who browse- A first time visitor would like to browse through every part of the blog. It would make things easier if internal links and references could be placed as options.
• Active posts that invite comments- Visitors seem to like their opinion being solicited and like to post their comments. The blog can decide to be an active one and also post these comments for others to see.
• Main website menu in blog- this will help visitors reach the main website straight from the blog, and will help to improve website traffic.
• Easily spotted menu- visitors should not have to search for the main menu and therefore it is better to place it on top so that it is clearly visible.

With these clarifications, the blog will take a shape and design that will help to push the blog in the preferred direction and visitors will find it easily accessible.

Blog content-when and what

The next crucial decision is about the blog content.

Frequency- Should blog posts be added every day, or alternate days, weekly or monthly? This is a tricky question, again linked to the perspective of the business owner. Experts believe that if regular posts are not seen, blogs die out and are ignored by search engines. If the blog has regular visitors then thrice a week makes sense, since they would like to read new material each time. If however, the blog just expresses expert opinions and is informative about topics then it need not be so frequent, and posts may be added as and when a new topic is introduced. Infrequent posts must not mention dates since dates may reveal that the post is old, and the reader will lose interest.

Personal or business content- Small business owners prefer personalized content to get the visitors involved about every aspect of the business. Including personal details, pictures and photos gets the visitors interested and more involved. A bigger business will have a blogging team and these blogs will be more business oriented, and used for promoting public relations, sharing news, advertising an event and so on.

Active posts with visitor participation- Comments from visitors seems like an interesting prospect but this can also have an adverse impact for a business if negative comments are posted or some unpleasant remarks are made. Comments need to be constantly monitored, and if found harmful, they must be removed before they cause damage.

Blogs offer tremendous opportunity, but it is “to each, their own”. Businesses need to figure out what suits their business the best, in terms of blog content, design and all other intricate details.

This is a Guest post by Neil Jones, who Specializes in launching ecommerce sites, he is currently plying his trade as head of marketing for eMobileScan. With 18 websites based all around Europe they are on course to be one of Europe’s largest online retailers of Industrial handheld computers and label printers like the Motorola MC75 terminal or Symbol MC9090. Neil has been an online marketer for the past 6 years and in that time he has owned and run a range of sites all built around the ecommerce platform.

• How to Take Your Blog to the Next Level – July 16, 2011
• Technological Advances are Making Contract Management Easier for Businesses – April 14, 2011
• Why Create A Business Blog? – April 8, 2011
• How to Set Goals for your Blog – March 31, 2011
• Facebook is the most used URL in Twitter Profiles – December 5, 2010

Creating a Unique Blog for your Business originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

Every blog needs to have goals.  Without goals you are just shooting in the dark, trying to succeed without knowing what success really is.  The problem most bloggers have is that they have very general goals that cannot be quantified.  They say their goals are to make money, to never have to work a 9-5 job again, or to go on a big vacation every year from the money they make on their blog.

But there are 2 problems with that mindset:

1.       Those are not really goals but a result of reaching set goals.

2.       There are no numbers associated with those goals.

In this article I will show you some goals you need to start setting with your blog.  Anything worth doing is worth doing right, and you will never hit a target if you are not aiming at it.  Having no target in your blogging is like using the lottery as a retirement plan.  Yes, some may hit the jackpot, but most will just end up losing money.

So what are some quantitative goals you can start setting?

Remember your goals need to be real numbers– something subjective and not objective.

Your goals can be to reach a certain number of…

1.       RSS feed subscribers

2.       Email subscribers

3.       Twitter followers

4.       Unique visitors in one month

5.       Rank in Google for a given keyword

6.       Indexed backlinks

You will notice that none of these goals have anything to do with money– at least not yet.  You see, when all of our goals have to do with making money we lose focus on how to actually DO it.  But when we focus on getting more email subscribers on our list and getting more targeted traffic to our blog then we will most certainly see a rise in our income levels as well.

One trap bloggers fall into is worrying so much on monetizing their blogs that they forget about the people that will be coming to their sites with the money.  These are the people that will allow you to quite your day job, so your focus needs to be on them.  What content are they looking for?  What questions do they have?  What will make them want to buy a product that you recommend?

Once you have determined what your goals are in real numbers you can set up a game plan.  How can you reach that level of email subscribers?  What do you need to do in order to get more quality backlinks to your site?

Your goals also need to have time frames.

Without a dead line for your goal to be reached you might as well not have a goal at all.  For instance, I can say I want to have 20,000 Twitter followers as my goal.  Then 3 years go by and I am still sitting at 5,000.   There is no urgency to reach that 20,000 goal if I have until the rest of my life to reach it.  The whole point in having goals is to reach them, and to make them a priority.  A dead line will put some fire to your feet to get things done.

You cannot succeed in reaching a goal if you make it impossible to fail.  It’s the chance that you might fail that makes reaching a goal so rewarding.  You may not reach every goal.  You probably won’t.  And if you find you are reaching every goal you set in a short period of time then you are probably not aiming high enough.  Set the bar a little higher and give yourself a challenge.

Set that time frame for those 20,000 followers.  Try to reach that goal in 3 months, 6 months, or a year.  Allow yourself the opportunity for failure, and then work as hard as you can to avoid it.

So to sum it all up:

1.        Set goals with numbers.

2.        Have deadlines with your goals.

3.        Setup yourself for failure.

4.        Will yourself to succeed and avoid that failure.

Guest Post by: Jonathan Souza is owner of CashCoach.net where you can find daily tips on internet marketing, social media, blogging, SEO, and more creative marketing techniques to get more traffic to your website.

• How to Take Your Blog to the Next Level – July 16, 2011
• 50 Ways to Promote Your Blog – February 6, 2011
• Best Blogs of 2010 – August 29, 2010
• WordPress 3.0.1 Released – August 1, 2010
• How to Fix the FeedBurner Counter Problem – July 25, 2010

How to Set Goals for your Blog originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

This blog is in charge of analyzing the #FollowFriday (or #FF) recommendations to create this type of reports, in this case combining their Twitter users database (with over 11 million users) with FilterTweeps, a powerful web app for searching users in Twitter.

The results of the URL in Twitter profiles show a preference by users to insert their Facebook home pages, taking the 28% of the total users. The other sites in the list are: Blogspot, 20%; Myspace, 13%; Tumblr, 8.3%; Orkut, 8%; Twitter (why?!), 6%. You can find the entire list here.

• Tumblr Is Growing Fast: Perfect Tool for Quick Blogging – March 9, 2010
• Socialtext 3.0 Leads Web 3.0 Revolution? – October 2, 2008
• Tumblr Passes WordPress.com in Blogs – June 17, 2011
• Tumblr About to Pass WordPress For Blog Hosting – May 11, 2011
• Facebook vs Twitter: 2010 Social Demographic Breakdown – December 21, 2010

Facebook is the most used URL in Twitter Profiles originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

We can find the complete list of anything you would like to use in your site, blog or application. Including of course: Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Technorati, RSS Feeds, Stumbleupon, sharethis, etc.

Download the entire set from this link.

Enjoy!

• 150 Social Media Icons for Free – September 19, 2010
• Free Grunge Social Media Icons – September 18, 2010
• Free Black Icons Set for Social Media and Twitter – September 12, 2010
• Generate your Twitter-like Logo for Free – December 5, 2010
• Microsoft offers Free Harry Potter Theme – December 5, 2010

Free Social Media Icons originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

I’m pretty sure we can find a blog that was left out in any of these three lists, and some others that did not belong here; but definitely we can find here some of the references in the “blogosphere”.

In the essentials we can find some really cool examples like TechCrunch; but the interesting are the overrated ones, the mentions were for Perez Hilton (totally agree), Fail blog, and a surprisingly Mashable.

Here are the lists:

Best Blogs

• Zenhabits
• PostSecret
• Climate Progress
• HiLobrow
• Hipster Runoff
• Kottke.org
• Cake Wrecks
• The Oatmeal
• S___ My Kids Ruined
• Deadline Hollywood
• Everything Everywhere
• The Sartorialist
• Information Is Beautiful
• The Daily Kitten
• Shorpy
• Apartment Therapy
• Double X
• Strobist
• Roger Ebert’s Journal
• The Awl
• GeekDad
• Engadget
• The Washington Note
• The Consumerist
• Pitchfork

Essential Blogs

• The Daily Wh.at
• TechCrunch
• Gawker
• Politico’s Ben Smith
• Boing Boing

Overrated Blogs

• FAIL Blog
• The Big Lead
• Perez Hilton
• Mashable
• Daily Kos

Can you make your own Top 5?

• How to Set Goals for your Blog – March 31, 2011
• TIME Magazine launch TechLand – November 17, 2009
• 17 New WordPress Themes That Will Rock Your Personal Blog – March 16, 2009
• Twingly: The Blog Search Engine That Is Actually Moving In The Right Direction – December 30, 2008
• Mashable: Non-stop Technology & Web News – September 13, 2008

Best Blogs of 2010 originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

We’ve discussed earlier about the big impact generated by WordPress 3.0 and the positive feedback around it; 54 bugs were found on the 3.0 version with only two critical. We can track the errors and tickets generated in WordPress with WordPress Trac.

Since version 2.7, WordPress includes the “Automatic Update” option, which works smoothly. But if you need a manual update you can always follow this guide.

In case you were wondering about the WordPress counter, the number is over 11 million downloads now.

• WordPress 3.0 with over 6 Million Downloads – July 12, 2010
• Free Social Media Icons – August 29, 2010
• 100 Free High Quality WordPress Themes (new set) – August 21, 2010
• Tumblr Is Growing Fast: Perfect Tool for Quick Blogging – March 9, 2010
• Backing up your blog with BlogBackupr – June 28, 2009

WordPress 3.0.1 Released originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

We all know if we want to build a company or just a profitable site one of the things we need is offering the payment options directly on our web sites. This set of icons includes all of normal possibilities: PayPal, credit cards, check, bank transfer.

This icon sets download package contains the six icons, and include a choice of eight different sizes: 12px, 16px, 24px, 32px, 64px, 128px, 256px and 512px.

Download link here.

• 150 Social Media Icons for Free – September 19, 2010
• Free Social Media Icons – August 29, 2010
• Seven Icon Pack: Amazing 475 Top Quality Icons Free for Personal and Commercial Use – April 2, 2011
• Free Grunge Social Media Icons – September 18, 2010
• Xbox 360 Adds Paypal Support – May 16, 2011

Free Payment Method Icons originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

Today’s counter says over 6 million downloads, and increasing really fast.

But that’s not all; WordPress.org also announced a few days ago that the plugin directory already has over 100 million downloads. Can you top that?

• WordPress 3.0.1 Released – August 1, 2010
• Facebook is the most used URL in Twitter Profiles – December 5, 2010
• Protect your Blog with VaultPress – April 11, 2010
• Tumblr Is Growing Fast: Perfect Tool for Quick Blogging – March 9, 2010
• Music Provider GrooveShark Wins Top CNET Award – May 29, 2009

WordPress 3.0 with over 6 Million Downloads originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

VaultPress

VaultPress offers a complete backup solution for your entire blog: articles, database, files, images and more. Giving you the chance whenever a disaster occurs, a fast and reliable restore can be executed. Also VaultPress will be in charge of monitoring the blog health against any possible security risks, applying the last updates.

Another remarkable point is that the people in charge of developing and maintaining VaultPress built it using the automatic grid from which over 10 million blogs from WordPress.com rely on.

VaultPress is only available as a private beta for now, and when the final version is released, this will be a paid service (around U$S15 or U$S20).

If you were wondering about a free possibility, we’ve already evaluated BlogBackupr.

• Jetpack: Power Up Your WordPress.org Blog with WordPress.com Features – March 10, 2011
• Backing up your blog with BlogBackupr – June 28, 2009
• Tumblr Passes WordPress.com in Blogs – June 17, 2011
• Tumblr About to Pass WordPress For Blog Hosting – May 11, 2011
• Facebook is the most used URL in Twitter Profiles – December 5, 2010

Protect your Blog with VaultPress originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

How is this working out for them? Well, according to the neat infographic which they’ve sent us (see below), their traffic and user base is growing fast, and they’ve recently hit some major milestones.

• Facebook is the most used URL in Twitter Profiles – December 5, 2010
• Save your Photos, Videos and Documents in one Place with PhotoRem – November 7, 2010
• WordPress 3.0.1 Released – August 1, 2010
• How to Take Your Blog to the Next Level – July 16, 2011
• Tumblr Passes WordPress.com in Blogs – June 17, 2011

Tumblr Is Growing Fast: Perfect Tool for Quick Blogging originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

More and more people are accessing the web via their phone. Statistics show that the iPhone and other smart phones are leading the field in the US and Europe where as cheaper Java cell phones are number one in Africa and South America. By making a mobile version of your website you are putting yourself ahead of the competition by giving your users an extra feature. One which could earn you extra ad revenue.

Mobify is a free service which allows you to do this in less than five minutes. Basically, it takes your website or blog and compact it into a basic format so it ill load easily on mobile devices. You’re also given a custom URL so your users can access the site. You can see a sample website above on the left and it’s mobile version created using Mobify to the right.

There is a premium version which offers more customisation and you can keep your won URL so users can access the mobile version through m.yourblog.com. This is a great service and it’s well worth a look if you want to offer your visitors an extra level of compatibility.

• IPHDAVAD The All In One HDMI and USB Port for Your iPhone and iPad – November 28, 2011
• iPhone 4: Retro Yet Futuristic Wooden iPhone Case – November 20, 2011
• Journey from the Phone to the iPhone – October 19, 2011
• Steve Jobs’ Last Project Was The iPhone 5 – October 16, 2011
• iPhone 4S Released Not the iPhone 5 – October 4, 2011

Mobilise Your Blog or Website With Mobify originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

Twitter is steadily climbing to reach the 50 million tweets per day mark. This huge social network now represents a large proportion of the information shared on the web. More and more people are discovering breaking news through its trending topics (millions found out about the Haitian earthquake via Twitter).

Now Yahoo! have just signed a deal to be put on what Twitter calls it’s Firehose. This means Tweets will now be continually indexed by Yahoo!.

“Similar to the partnerships we have made with other large internet companies, Yahoo! will receive what has been dubbed “Firehose”—a full feed of public tweets sent to Twitter and our partners every second of every day from all around the world.”

Through this arrangement, you’ll be able to find tweets through Yahoo! Search amongst other Yahoo! services Mail and Sport. It is also said that Yahoo! will be building unique Twitter clients to enable people to tweet from inside the Yahoo! network.

Twitter hit the nail on the head when they discussed how Tweets are vital to the social news scene and their inclusion in other big Internet services is vital:

“Tweets may be short, but they have proven over and over again to contain valuable information. As the Twitter information network grows and expands, it becomes more valuable for everyone who participates. Our open approach helps us get closer to providing universal connectivity to a global network of immediate information.”

• Meme will Challage Twitter in a World War – August 20, 2009
• Yahoo! Has Clause to Back Out From Microsoft Deal – August 5, 2009
• What Font Does Google Use in their Logo: Fonts of Leading Internet Brands – March 8, 2011
• Facebook is the most used URL in Twitter Profiles – December 5, 2010
• Google is Offering $4 Billion Dollars to Buy Twitter? – November 20, 2010

Twitter and Yahoo Team Up for Real Time Tweets in Search Results originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

They’ll cover the more ‘user orientated’ area of the market with much of their categories revolving around products and less about news. These categories include Gadgets, Gaming, Culture and Videos.

Overall, it looks like a good website from a reliable bunch however the design is a little sloppy and I’d imagine they’ll be tidying things up a bit as the site grows. The ties with TIME are still evident with many of their information pages such as ‘Contact Us’ leading directly to TIME’s customer services page.

• Best Blogs of 2010 – August 29, 2010
• Manage Your Time Creatively Using Photos! – November 3, 2011
• Steve Jobs at His Best – October 6, 2011
• iPad Features Are Terrible When Compared to HP TC 1100 from 2003 – September 29, 2011
• How to Take Your Blog to the Next Level – July 16, 2011

TIME Magazine launch TechLand originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

Grooveshark awarded CNET's Top 100 Webware Award

the application, though it had some good aspects, I just did not feel comfortable with the entire package. It was not long after that post that officials from Grooveshark contacted me for a dialogue encouraging me to take a look at the offerings again, highlighting features I had not really seen the first time around. In the year that I’ve had with Grooveshark, I’m impressed with the continued efforts it’s making to establish itself as a viable music service for users.

CNET was obviously impressed enough to award it the 2009 Webware Winner for Audio and Music. Grooveshark has indeed come a long way and its user base has grown significantly. With this announcement comes features that again make Grooveshark heads above the rest. For starters their partnership with Ping.fm to build Tinysong API, which allows users to take the code and develop webapps that provide access to Groovesharks extensive library of music. It will be interesting to see what developers come up with as we’ve seen with various other online applications, the opening of the API makes it easy for supplementary apps to proliferate the net.

The second feature that was announced deals specifically with the blogging community. Grooveshark has announced that is now has a WordPress plugin that allows integration into blog posts for users to set up their favorite songs for specific posts. You can set up just one song, or a playlist of songs for your readers on your site. An interesting option, at the very least you could create a small station of songs on your, possibly with a widget.

Grooveshark is definitely expanding its platform and appeal, and it should be interesting to see how much further they go in 2009!

• Facebook is the most used URL in Twitter Profiles – December 5, 2010
• WordPress 3.0.1 Released – August 1, 2010
• WordPress 3.0 with over 6 Million Downloads – July 12, 2010
• Protect your Blog with VaultPress – April 11, 2010
• Tumblr Is Growing Fast: Perfect Tool for Quick Blogging – March 9, 2010

Music Provider GrooveShark Wins Top CNET Award originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

To help you out with the design, we at Crenk have put together 17 new wordpress themes that we believe, will rock your personal blog. Read on.

Creative Art

Theme Info | Demo

Masinop

Theme Info | Demo

Nouice

Theme Info | Demo

Scruffy

Theme Info | Demo

Vigilance

Theme Info | Demo

Simply

Theme Info | Demo

WGrey

Theme Info | Demo

Simple Pro

Theme Info | Demo

Simple Changes

Theme Info | Demo

Reviews Theme

Theme Info | Demo

ProudBlack

Theme Info | Demo

Modicus Remix

Theme Info | Demo

Modern

Theme Info | Demo

LightWeight

Theme Info | Demo

IAMWW W2 DnD

Theme Info | Demo

Bright Spring

Theme Info | Demo

Elegance

Theme Info | Demo

So that ends the list. I hope you liked it, if that’s so, show me some love and Digg it

(By) An avid freelance writer and technology enthusiast, Keshav Khera is young geek from India. Fanatic about the web, he also writes a blog and makes unsuccessful efforts to avoid twitter.

• Free Social Media Icons – August 29, 2010
• 100 Free High Quality WordPress Themes (new set) – August 21, 2010
• Twingly: The Blog Search Engine That Is Actually Moving In The Right Direction – December 30, 2008
• XbList is a Desktop Xbox 360 Friends List – May 8, 2011
• Give Away Of The Day gives you free software everyday – May 5, 2011

17 New WordPress Themes That Will Rock Your Personal Blog originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

In less than a year, Zemanta has made a name for itself in the blogosphere. By becoming the premier add-on to the FireFox browser, bloggers now had access to an amazing set of tools to provide further depth to their posts. With hundreds of thousands of downloads, it seemed like a surefire winner, and there was little doubt that Zemanta has room to expand, but where and when?

Zemanta late last year supported another FireFox add-on called ScribeFire, a simple blogging tool that opened up in your browser without having to log into any other site or leave the page you are on. This allowed for amazingly quick posting to the blog of your choice, but also provided the same depth that you had available to you from within most popular blogging platforms like WordPress, Blogger, and TypePad.

Recently it was announced that Zemanta has made another move towards mass market exposure, it has integrated with Gmail and Yahoo Mail, offering users of those mail clients the ability to attached related articles, pictures, and keywords to their emails that the recipients might need to fully understand the topic. I personally can’t imagine a better mass exposure opportunity than attaching yourself to two of the largest mail clients on the internet today.

Zemanta is a key tool that I recommend all bloggers install, but now with mail enhancements, I’m happy to see them growing. I’ve always been a big supporter of their efforts as it’s nice to see innovative ways to breathe life into a long standing medium like blogging.

It’s apparent that Zemanta will continue to offer what it always has; by offering photo suggestions, article suggestions, and keyword suggestions, as you type, updating every 300 words, there is bound to be another leap into further integration.

Perhaps a jump into an office platform for document and presentation creation, like Microsoft Office or OpenOffice. Only time will tell!

• 5 Firefox To-Do Plug-ins – July 25, 2008
• MonkeyFly: Customise Your Twitter Easily and for Free – January 9, 2010
• New Thunderbird Appeals to Masses – December 8, 2009
• Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Early Beta – October 16, 2009
• Firefox 3.7 with Office-like Ribbon? – September 28, 2009

Zemanta Now Available on Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and ScribeFire originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

Enter, stage left, Twingly.com, a Swedish blog search engine founded by Martin Källström.

According to Twingly.com’s ‘about‘ section, the philosophy behind their search system is to produce “a blog search engine featuring a spam-free, faceted, social search for the global blogosphere”. Nice, but aren’t Technorati and URLFan doing the same thing? Twingly uses relationships, ie how well linked each blog and article is, to work out how relevant to your search they are. Key to the service is a blog’s ‘approval’. If a blog is not approved by the Twingly team (meet them here), it could potentially be spam. If you are the owner of a blog that comes up as not being approved, you can of course resolve that little issue by sending the Twingly team a swift e-mail.

You can express your opinion on the blogs Twingly finds via a fluorescent green ‘links/likes’ tab. This shows you how many people are linking to the page and it allows you, once you’ve signed up to the service, to vote on if the post is relevant or useful – it’s the equivalent of Technorati Favourites.

Where it gets really interesting though is the blog profile page. With some nifty “research”, we can compare Crenk’s ranking on Twingly, Technorati and URLFan.

Crenk is ranked 3/10 (10 being the highest) with 43 blogs registering as being linked to various articles on Twingly. Technorati claims 80 and URLFan says 45, with 199 other mentions. These are vastly differing numbers, and you have to wonder if Technorati is brilliantly accurate  or if it’s not omitting that nasty spam.

Some other nice touches from Twingly include the ability to search within a certain timeframe, <em>as mentioned</em> you can search by one of the 12 supported languages, and you can also look  for blogs that have been officially approved, thus weeding out any other possible spam.

Twingly have also released their top 100 blogs by ranking, and if you are proud of where your blog sits in their 1-10 scale, you can of course throw on that all important badge to show it off. One rather large omission however,  is the Huffington Post.

With this in mind it is safe to say that Twingly isn’t the most accurate blog search engine, yet. However, the layout is simple and practical,  and although the ‘likes/links’ updating isn’t instantaneous (it took about ten minutes to register), the future looks very bright for the Twingly team who are currently overseeing about 25 million searches per month.

Twingly has the potential to be a very good blog search engine. It looks good, is quick when pulling together results and the blog profiles, in relation to each other, are very useful; it even has some pleasant widgets to pop alongside your page ranking.

They are very much into their feedback in Sweden, and you can vote for your most wanted features at the Twingly Tech Plan page.

Try Twingly.com out for yourself and let us know what you think.

• 17 New WordPress Themes That Will Rock Your Personal Blog – March 16, 2009
• 26 New And Awesome Web Apps You Probably Don’t Know About – March 3, 2009
• Top Real Estate WordPress Themes – January 31, 2011
• Facebook is the most used URL in Twitter Profiles – December 5, 2010
• Best Blogs of 2010 – August 29, 2010

Twingly: The Blog Search Engine That Is Actually Moving In The Right Direction originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

• How to Handle Several Twitter Accounts – September 19, 2010
• Personal Search for Your Twitter Contacts – December 31, 2009
• Social Media Revolution – September 6, 2009
• 10 Twitter Hashtags to Live a More Frugal and Sustainable Life – October 27, 2011
• JP Morgan Didnt Invest in Twitter – March 3, 2011

You Could Be Britney Spears New Boyfriend! originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

Socialtext 3.0 is an online application that looks to lead the pack in 3.0 technology. This enterprise collaboration tool connects employees within a company, and the company with its customer base in a way that is all in one, and does not rely on jumping from social platform to social platform. Think of Socialtext as a combination of Twitter, Facebook, Wiki, and Blog, all wrapped into one with seamless integration and manipulation to maintain company identity.

In a market that is quickly becoming full of enterprise clones of Twitter and other social networks, Socialtext does have an uphill battle in the market. On their side is the fact that it’s a one stop shop and some major leaders in the industry have already recognized the importance of such an application such as IKEA, Kraft, Intel, Symantec to name a few.

In an article on TechCrunch, they best explain by saying “SocialText 3.0 has the feel of a technology that emerged in the open source, community-driven culture, yet is now well-positioned for adoption by small and medium-sized businesses that more and more are linking together across corporate domains and between workers, partners, and customers.”

The idea is to increase productivity and ingenuity by collaborating with your co-workers in a way that does not hinder the day to day operations of business. No more waiting for “water cooler” talk to exchange ideas or workout problems, Socialtext 3.0 brings the world within your company to you.

• Facebook is the most used URL in Twitter Profiles – December 5, 2010
• Facebook vs Twitter: 2010 Social Demographic Breakdown – December 21, 2010
• Save your Photos, Videos and Documents in one Place with PhotoRem – November 7, 2010
• How to Add a Sidebar with Facebook, Twitter, Delicio.us and Digg – October 31, 2010
• Virus Infecting Mac and Linux – October 31, 2010

Socialtext 3.0 Leads Web 3.0 Revolution? originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

Arrington reports that like any other site, their numbers fluctuate. Weekends are slow, but mid-week is their best time period. Still, even with the fluctuations, fans stay for the news and are even offered various ways to stay in touch with what is happening in the world of technology; Twitter, RSS Feed, FriendFeed, are just as few examples of how TechCrunch stays in touch with their readers.

Recentlly TechCrunch held their TechCrunch50 event which has been covered on Crenk here and here. Because of Arrington’s love for start-ups, he offers some of the best in the world a stage for them to highlight their products, network with VC’s and other interested high profile people, and in turn gives a little back with the success he’s achieved.

I highly recommend businesses to take a look at TechCrunch because as investors, you could be a part of the next big thing in the tech world!

• Goodbye Cuil, We Barely Knew You…Literally – September 20, 2010
• TechCrunch50 Showcases Startups – September 2, 2008
• Crenk is Getting Greatly Improved! – October 18, 2011
• How to Take Your Blog to the Next Level – July 16, 2011
• AOL Consolidating Blog Brands into 20 Power Brands! – July 4, 2011

TechCrunch Hits 1 Million Milestone originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

Mashable has been highlighted in Technorati, the New York Times, Washington Post and Forbes, while being a fan favorite to interact and catch up on the latest events. Mashable’s contributing writers are all published and established writers that look to be a part of a much bigger blog. Just recently Pete and the Mashable team put on a Mashable Tour with their partners of Social Media Camp. This multi-city tour highlighted presentations from the best of web and media minds and afterwards offered an excellent opportunity for these minds to mingle.

Currently Pete Cashmore divides his time between San Francisco, New York, and the UK. He’s constantly staying abreast of the latest trends in social networks, and hosts monthly events to keep the conversation going.

I have personally met Pete during one of the Mashable tours here in Austin, and was amazed at how cool and approachable he was. He literally took photos with all the hundreds of people that attended the after party and was truly interested in talking to everyone.

Mashable is a definite site to subscribe to, and make sure to follow Mashable on Twitter as well for even more information then you think you can handle. Just watch out for the overload!

• Twitter De-stablizing Celebrity Presence – January 30, 2010
• Facebook is the most used URL in Twitter Profiles – December 5, 2010
• Best Blogs of 2010 – August 29, 2010
• Tumblr Is Growing Fast: Perfect Tool for Quick Blogging – March 9, 2010
• Twitter and Yahoo Team Up for Real Time Tweets in Search Results – February 28, 2010

Mashable: Non-stop Technology & Web News originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

• How to Take Your Blog to the Next Level – July 16, 2011
• Creating a Unique Blog for your Business – May 17, 2011
• How to Set Goals for your Blog – March 31, 2011
• Facebook is the most used URL in Twitter Profiles – December 5, 2010
• Woman Claims She Now Owns the Sun – November 28, 2010

Top 5 Blogs for Women… originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook

Ranking was the most interesting to me. I don’t necessarily find their method to be accurate of a sites worth, but it’s a nice way to see if a site is active or has been dormant for some time. What blogged.com apparently looks at the frequency of the updates on your site and ranks it with a number. The higher the number the more active the site is, but the question becomes is the information worth my time? Is it relevant and well put together. I have friends that update their site three or four times a day, but their efforts are nothing more than to keep a diary of their day, not necessarily hard hitting information so to speak. Just my opinion though.

Users are allowed to write reviews and over time, as reviews are written and enough people have given their thoughts, a new rating is given to replace blogged.com’s rating. Seems a bit arbitrary, but I’ve not been with blogged.com long enough to really see this through. I’m curious to see how others rate my own site and furthermore, what the final outcome will be in terms of a ranking.

A social aspect of blogged.com is present, but does not differ than any of the other offerings from competitors. You are able to invite friends to your circle of favorites, share information through the site, and build a community around your own site.

The underlying factor in all this is simply to drive traffic to your site. Blogged.com does a great job of this, as noted in my own personal experience. Even if you are registered with other categories, it does not hurt to join this community. You might even find yourself enjoying the offerings of this well put together site for quite some time.

• How to Take Your Blog to the Next Level – July 16, 2011
• Creating a Unique Blog for your Business – May 17, 2011
• How to Set Goals for your Blog – March 31, 2011
• Facebook is the most used URL in Twitter Profiles – December 5, 2010
• Free Social Media Icons – August 29, 2010

Directory Magic with Blogged.com originally appeared on: Crenk
Join our Community: Twitter, Facebook